


Eating Fish For Luck

by Harrysboots4ever



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29711160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harrysboots4ever/pseuds/Harrysboots4ever
Summary: Fluff.
Relationships: Caelum Lestrange/Harriet Potter | Rigel Black
Comments: 8
Kudos: 59





	Eating Fish For Luck

On August 20, 1995 Caelum Lestrange became a Potions Master. 

His mother had spent the summer doing her best to make it clear that she wasn’t terribly impressed with his achievement and that she wasn’t at all interested in attending the ceremony. 

“Snape with his dirty muggle father and practically a squib mother managed to become a Master at seventeen.”

Caelum hadn't bothered to explain to her that when Master Snape had become a Master you just had to pass a practical exam. Master Snape had brewed a few restricted potions to impress some old fools and the Guild had made him a Master on the spot.

If it was still that easy to become a Master the ugly little brat could have become a Master at age thirteen.

Caelum had completed a prestigious apprenticeship with Master Whitaker, provided recommendations from three other well-respected Masters, written a thesis so revolutionary that it had been immediately classified and then passed his exams. Not bad for being just short of nineteen.

He had been scheduled initially to receive his mastery robe the following week but he would have been nineteen then. Not nearly as impressive. Especially if the rumours were true that fifteen year old Harriett Potter was just waiting on her NEWT results to schedule her own Mastery exams. As soon as he heard that she had passed her OWLs and had received special permission from Aldermaster Hurst to start her Mastery thesis prior to providing proof of her Potions and Herbology NEWTs he had asked Hurst to move up his ceremony. There was a limit to how much he was going to let that little half-blood upstart outdo him.

Hurst had just laughed and said something insipid about eager young people but he had made the change. His mother had been furious and Caelum hadn’t understood why until now.

Caelum hadn't expected anyone to show up for his ceremony. 

He’d underestimated the need to make young purebloods look impressive apparently.

Caelum’s Mother and Father were in attendance (he couldn’t recall them ever previously attending anything he had ever done). The Malfoys were there; Draco looking bored out of his mind, Aunt Nacissa and Uncle Lucius making forced smiles at his parents. His godfather Rookwood was there accompanied by his heir and the Selwyn girl. Various other members of the SOW party had feared his Mother enough to make an appearance and were milling around the room, eating the refreshments that his mother had arranged instead of the usual slop the Guild would have provided. Lord Riddle himself had showed up to shake hands with the Aldermaster and pose for a picture with Caelum for the Daily Prophet. 

People who had never given him the time of day before now wanted to shake his hand or pat him on the shoulder. Hurst and Whitaker were just so delighted to have something positive to spin to the press about the handsome new Master at the Guild. Lord Riddle who hasn’t spoken to Caelum in over two years was pretending to anyone he spoke to that he had known Caelum wanted to be a potions master since he was a small child. It was all Caelum could do to not roll his eyes at everyone.

The horrible photographer was saying something about a two page spread in the society pages. Apparently Caelum’s ceremony had become a “social event” like one of those daft tea parties or summer formals. There was almost no one here that could brew so much as a boil removal potion.

It was positively sickening.

Caelum looked around the room for someone he actually wanted to talk to and spotted a short figure in yellow dress robes. His eyes narrowed. What was she doing here?

He eyed her from the ground up, taking in the heeled shoes she couldn’t balance properly in, her bright robes that served only to make her look younger, (the last thing the future youngest potions master in history needed was to look younger, who was giving her such terrible wardrobe advice?), her anxious face and her curly black hair, arranged in a crown around her head with a bright yellow ribbon. 

Harriett walked closer to him and for a second he thought that she was going to tell him off for so obviously and rudely leering at her. 

She surprised him with a hug. There was a bit of a titter behind him; even his own mother hadn’t hugged him today and Potter wasn’t even family. Caelum wasn’t entirely sure what to do so he patted her on the back.

Caelum could hear the flash of the Daily Prophet camera and hoped against all hope that they wouldn’t run the photo. He wasn’t usually that lucky but his Mother could probably have the photograph and maybe the photographer destroyed.

Harry’s hug was warm and yellow and smelled of lilac perfume over stewed lacewing flies. 

“Congratulations Caelum.” Her smile was genuine but a bit uncertain. They hadn’t parted on good terms the last time he had seen her at Tate’s Apothecary. 

“Aldermaster Hurst invited me here, I hope that it’s alright.”

His Father came over. Tall, imposing and frowning. Lord Lestrange didn’t bother to even acknowledge Harriett before addressing Caelum. 

“Caelum, there’s some people from the Department of Mysteries who are asking to meet you-“ Caelum waved him away and his Father stormed off with a sour look on his face.

“I’m sorry about what happened at Tate’s,” Harriett said to him with a look of urgency in her eyes. “I wasn’t quite myself that day.” 

He gazed at her thoughtfully as she rambled on. Really, her new face was tolerable. Those robes though...

“I am really happy that you’ve become a Master,” Harriett said earnestly. “I don’t know when I’ll actually manage it-“

“Brat, do you have any plans this evening,” Caelum said, cutting her off. 

She looked at him rather embarrassed. “Well, I’m still on curfew so I’m going home as soon as this event is over.”

Caelum sighed. “I’m asking you to go out to dinner with me.”

Harry looked around the full room. There were at least two hundred people here. Many of them his family or associates of his family. Important people in the ministry and in the business community. 

“Don’t you want to go to dinner with your family? It looks like you’re the perfect one now.”

She laughed but there was no happiness in her eyes. 

Caelum eyed her intently. “I think I would rather have dinner with someone who understands what I’ve been doing this last year than with any of these people who just like the idea of what I’ve been doing.”

She gaped at him. 

“The fish tank restaurant. I’ll meet you there at seven.” 

Caelum looked at her again. “And for Merlin’s sake change those robes, you look like a lemon.”

He walked over to his Father, smiling genuinely.


End file.
